About Me

Welcome to my math blog! The purpose of this blog is to help you stay informed about our learning and experiences that have taken place during our math class.
I have also included links your child (and you) may want to use in order to supplement math learning in 5th grade.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Valentine's in Math

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, so we had our Valentine's celebration this afternoon. In the meantime, we had class! Don't let your child fool you.... we had class!!!

To begin, we created a Google Drawing page. I assigned a problem (3/4 x 5), and asked the students to show the answer to the problem using models. While this was to assess understanding, it was also the platform needed to introduce the tools in Google Drawing. By the end of the allotted time, most students had a drawing that looked like this:

Then we learned how to turn in a Google Drawing using Classroom. We also revisited Discovery Education to get the link to their "board" that they built yesterday. We pasted the link into our homework assignment in Classroom and submitted both projects at once! There are a still a few glitches that I need to learn to make the process smoother, but overall it was a great learning experience.

Then, it was on to Valentine Math! I do so love when kids love math! We explored the following problem:

Would You Rather....

This was assigned to the kids using Classroom. Each student opened a Google Doc that had the prompt, a section for predicting, a section for data, and a section for their conclusion. To begin, I asked each student to make a prediction as to which they would rather have and explain why they thought it was the best choice. I explained that there wasn't really a right or wrong, I just wanted them to explain their thinking. Next, I handed each student a sheet of white paper and a "dollar" and asked them to trace the dollar twice on the paper. Then I traded the "dollar" for a "quarter". The students used the quarter to trace around the outside perimeter of the dollar. Once they knew how many quarters were needed, then they multiplied this by the dime. That was an eye opener.... they did not know how to write the notation for a dime (.10)....Next, they traded their quarter for a box of candy hearts and they placed the candy hearts around the dollar, problem solving when there were not enough, and determined the number of hearts that would fit. My favorite was the student who STOOD the hearts UP so that he could fit more around the perimeter! One they had their number, this time they had to multiply by a nickel. EYE OPENER... they kept writing a nickel as .5!Once they had determined both amounts, they wrote about their data on their Doc, wrote their conclusion, and turned the assignment in. But we weren't done...I gave them a sheet of paper with 6 hearts on it, and the following chart:

I had them write a term from one of their candies in the first heart and determine its value. Feeling nice, I allowed them to use a calculator! They were looking to see if any of the sayings equaled 100. Once they knew a heart was not the right value they could eat it! Oh, happy day!